Newsflash

"Another cool video Marcel! nice that you caught that little off track incident." Klemmer, "haha yah..great capture. You just missed the air-fence ehh? Irnie, "Yep. About a foot off the airfence..Big oh sh*t moment for me. :)"

In the months preceding the start of the Mopar Canadian Pro Superbike Championship series, no one can say that Marcel Irnie didn’t put his work in. In an effort to hone his skills, Irnie attended several early season races including stops in Washington, Oregon, California and Utah. Add this to the countless gym sessions and the many hours on the phone courting sponsors made for little spare time in Irnie’s world. Promising early season results were marred by a heavy crash in California and a nagging electronics power delivery issue from his new BMW S1000RR in the last few tune-up races. This power delivery issue was still present and weighing heavily on his mind as he left Kelowna, BC for the long 55 hour journey to Ontario.

Just a few hours into the trip, heavy flooding at Revelstoke, BC left Irnie and his father stranded for 20 hours. They would have to put in three consecutive 20 hours days on the road to arrive early enough to have a BMW dealer look deeper into his electronics issue. Ajax BMW was very helpful in pulling parts off another S1000RR for quicker diagnosing. ECU, wiring harness, injectors, spark plugs and fuel pump electronics were all replaced, but a low fuel pressure digital reading of 1.74 Bar was still present. Despite their best efforts, the problem was undiagnosed. Irnie would have to head to Shannonville Motorsports Park and do his best with DTC (dynamic traction control) and powerband faults.

Irnie’s late arrival to Ontario caused him to miss the trackday session. He would have to use the Friday and Saturday practice sessions to learn the course prior to Saturday qualifying. In official qualifying, Irnie set a time of 1:06.577. This was good for 12th of 20 riders and put him 1.221 seconds back of qualifying leader Jordan Szoke.

On Sunday, after a dry warm-up session, the riders’ set-up plans were thrown into disarray as rain passed through the area. The rain stopped as the race was about to start, but everyone would start on rain tires. Irnie started from the 12th grid position and battled with old rival Samuel Proulx for most of the race. Irnie and Proulx had competed against each other in the 600 amateur class in 2010. Irnie prevailed on this day, nipping Proulx by less than half a second for 11th place at the finish. They would finish 50 seconds behind race winner Andrew Nelson.

Irnie stated after the race that he was reasonable pleased with the result. “The 18 lap distance was twice as long as the USA races in my training and the Shannonville course is quite rough, so I was pretty beat at the end. With minimal chance to practice here and a bit of a electronics handicap, this is a base to build on. I fully expect better results in the coming weeks.”

Marcel Irnie’s next race is round 2 of the Mopar Canadian Superbike Championship at the Autodrome St. Eustache at Saint-Eustache, Quebec. He will be attending at a track day there on July 5th and working with BMW to find a solution to his electronic issues in the meantime.